So where was I?????  Oh right….recovering from the thick milk and 1960’s sexist Fluffo commercials.   Thank sweet baby jeebus on a cracker we, as a society, have moved so far forward that sexism (and racism and homophobia and and and) has totally been eradicated.

(*Actual gif of me)

So I did a little more research and discovered some updated recipes for sugar cakes and this is the one I ultimately decided to use:

Pastry Chef Baking

from the following book Cookies Unlimited

They were easy enough to make, but I did learn a few things.

1. When using the ice cream scooper to drop the cookie dough onto the sheet, make sure that it isn’t broken.  The swishy piece that helps the ice cream leave the scooper and drop into your bowl was broken off of mine, with the little metal piece no where to be found.  I still used the defective scooper, because these cakes needed to be big and this would give me the correct size.
2. I didn’t have enough time to chill or freeze my dough, but that would have been very helpful as the dough does not have the typical cookie dough consistency but is closer to a thicker cake batter.
3. To keep the dough from sticking too much to said broken ice cream scooper, keep the scooper in warm/hot water.  I had a tough time with the sticky dough and didn’t think of this trick until AFTER i had finished scooping the batter onto the cookie trays.
4. The recipe above does not really specify this, but put sugar on top of the sugar cake prior to baking!

As mentioned above, the dough was closer to cake batter consistency rather than cookie dough consistency, which I think makes sense, but when I watched the video (linked below) of the sweet baby angels that make the Brown’s Orchard sugar cakes the batter was thicker.  So….

(*WATCH SCHITT’S CREEK!!!! IT’S WONDERFUL!!!!)

Ultimately the sugar cakes turned out fine and taste pretty close to my grandmother’s and the ones we would sometimes buy from Brown’s Orchard.   But I did feel like I missed maybe one little thing or perhaps I just need to try out one of the recipes from What’s Cookin, from actual PA Dutch Christian womAn.

You can tell that I needed the extra time to chill the dough and the warm water looking at the slight misshapen cakes and the thin brown extra bits from not having a clean drop.  This is typical for me though, my bakes are always yummy, but the appearance is where I let myself down.  Oh-well.

Ms. Dino Trainer and Mini Dino Trainer came over to chill, play with the cats, and visit the Museum of Natural History to go see the dinosaurs (of course!), so I had some guinea pi……..uh taste testers.   As far as know they are still among the living and appeared to enjoy the sugar cakes or at least were kind enough to lie flawlessly to me.   And really what more could you ask for from a friend!  Additionally, Mr. Cat Wrangler has been sneaking cookies while I wasn’t watching despite “not really liking sweets”.   All in all a check in the win department.  Next time should be a much smoother process and I’ll definitely leave time to chill the dough/batter.

Browns Market Sugar Cakes